Cake smash photography in West Sussex Horsham Crawley Billingshurst Redhill and Haywards Heath
Cake smash photography has been around for a couple of years now and has been described to me as the baby equivalent of a wedding ‘trash the dress shoot’ and I’ve been waiting for the perfect opportunity to capture this fantastic life event for someone. Turns out I didn’t need to wait long, my son (William) was celebrating his 1st birthday recently, and a group of friends all with babies of about the same age decided to undertake a cake smash photo shoot to celebrate our babies officially becoming toddlers together.
The ideas of a cake smash, if you’ve never heard of the idea before, is simple. Put a baby and the biggest cake you can bake/buy together and capture what happens in the ensuing destruction of iced confectionery and the sugar rush enjoyed by your little one. The reality of it though is that to capture the best photos of a cake smash you actually need to spend time coordinating everything so that the photos really pop out at you rather than looking dull and flat. So with four families from across West Sussex trying to coordinate times, colours and locations we had our work cut out. Finally the backgrounds and props were brought, outfits chosen, cakes baked (or brought) and babies prepared.
Coordinating a cake smash, get the right colours and cake, match the outfit to the props and details.
When the day came and we all gathered at the studio in Horsham, I admit we were all a little apprehensive about our children doing the one thing every health proffesional says they shouldn’t (ie: stuffing their faces with icing sugar!) So just to get things started and to record our children reaching their first milestone birthday (or should I say our survival of first year of being parents?) we took a few baby portrait photos of each child before we let them got messy.
Baby portrait photo before the cake smash begins
William was then volunteered as the first baby up and the cake was put on the scene and we waited for the inevitable…or so we thought, to all of our surprise, every baby in our group was far more delicate and careful with their cake than we’d anticipated; to the point of them all needing a little bit of help breaking through the butter cream icing top layer. William carefully picked off every smartie on his own cake before eating just one of the chocolate fingers attached to the side. Maddox was a little more committed and had a taste of the actual cake and won the prize for messiest baby, Isobel was a proper little lady and didn’t want to get messy at all, but she got their in the end, even to the point of getting her feet involved! And Rosie could well have been a little princess, sitting there delicately eating one handful of pink icing at a time before dipping in for another taste.
There’s nothing like a toddler who eats their cake like a princess!
All in all, not quite what I imagined a cake smash to be, but I think the finished photos are fantastic and beautiful, with each child’s personalities shining through in their little set of photos all the kids went home with happy parents (and not screaming from a sugar overload) and the cakes…well I must admit I ended up eating most of ours… :-)
Clearing up after this was fun!
So if you’re anywhere in the West Sussex area (Horsham, Crawley, Southwater, Billingshurst, Haywards Heath, Rudgwick, Redhill) and are looking for a great way to celebrate your child’s first milestone please do get in touch. I’d love to hear from you. And with Prices starting at £75 for a home shoot and £100 for a studio shoot, this is a fantastic opportunity to capture some beautiful photos of your child that you will treasure for ever.
